Cam Newton is a crappy leader, if he's a leader at all at this point. He's a kid in his twenties, and he's got a lot of maturing to do. He needs people to take cues from along the way, which he doesn't seem to have. I'm not going to expect a sophomore player to carry the team on his back talent-wise AND emotionally. He's got great potential, but it's going to take time to see it fully formed.

Eli Manning struggled to become a leader as well, and look at him now. It takes time, and in the meantime, haters gon' hate.

Sorry, but a leader doesn't talk with his head down at press conferences and refuse to make eye contact with anyone all while spewing disegenious drivel and asking for a "suggestion box" about how to improve.

Cam Newton is a crappy leader, if he's a leader at all at this point. He's a kid in his twenties, and he's got a lot of maturing to do. He needs people to take cues from along the way, which he doesn't seem to have. I'm not going to expect a sophomore player to carry the team on his back talent-wise AND emotionally. He's got great potential, but it's going to take time to see it fully formed.

Eli Manning struggled to become a leader as well, and look at him now. It takes time, and in the meantime, haters gon' hate.

Cam is the biggest leader in the locker room right now. Which is unfortunate because guys who've been here almost 10 years arent. Some of us mistake professional losers (meaning guys who accept losing, but are professional about it) with leadership. There's no one in that locker room that displays leadership on the field week to week like Cameron. There's no one in that locker room who is held accountable for their play the way Cameron is. Thats why I expect a lot of those guys to be gone in the offseason. We're undergoing a cultural change, and part of that change is ridding ourselves of professional nice guys that accept losing. That is not LEADERSHIP, that is complacency.

Newton is certainly way more talented than Leaf and probably doesn't posses the same amount of baggage, but the maturity and leadership comparison I think is valid. And they are both surly, albeit in different ways....

Cam still has time to mature and live up to he billing but like George i see coach killer written all over him at this point in his career.

Its hard to motivate guys over 30 who've been on losing teams most of their careers and are feasting off Marty Hurney's contracts.

no offense, but that's a cop-out. he doesn't need to worry about those guys. there's only a couple of them there. the rest of the team, tho, is young and quite capable of being molded into something better.

i've said it quite a few times. cam has one of the most infectious personalities i've seen. we've all seen the positive effect that he can have on people. he's known for being able to walk into a room and win it over with just his smile. with blinn and auburn he was primarily responsible for those two team's national championships and if you watched him at auburn you essentially saw him will his team back from pretty significant deficits because he knew what everyone there was capable of.

he walked into those situations and ended up owning them. he got those teams fired up in a big way and he could do the very same thing here...but he's not buying it himself yet. i'm sure he gets frustrated at what others do, but i think he gets more frustrated at what he does...the mistakes he makes and he can't shake it off. that feeling of "oh crap. here it goes again" comes from him as much as any and as soon as people on the team see him feeling defeated, the rest of the team will become infected with the same doubt he feels.

if he can somehow rise above his situation he'll be able to get the others to do the same. once he pulls that off, this team is going to start winning consistently and there's not any bad coaching that would keep that from happening. there's no 30+ year old with a loser complex is going to be able to get in his way.

if he can get his mindset back to where it was at blinn and auburn, he can get this team's mindset back where it needs to be.